From the right in Serbia to the front in Ukraine
The facade of the Belgrade Faculty of Physics in Braće Jugović Street has long been decorated with a portrait of Joe Strummer, the legendary frontman of the punk-rock group The Clash, who spread the ideas of solidarity, equality and brotherhood in his work.
Right next to it, a mural dedicated to Serbian citizen Stefan Dimitrijević, who died in Ukraine fighting on the side of Russia, appeared recently. The mural shows symbols that carry a diametrically opposite message compared to Stramer's.
Along with the portrait of Dimitrijević, the flag of the former Russian Empire, the coat of arms from the time of the Quisling government of Milan Nedić, is also painted.
Mural also revealed the name of the unit in which he allegedly fought - the Ghost Mechanized Brigade.
The public can only guess about the exact number of Serbian citizens participating in the Ukrainian battlefield, since the official institutions of Serbia do not disclose this information.
"They all see themselves as patriots, no one sees themselves as a radical person," Jarmila Bujak Stanko, a psychologist and consultant of the non-governmental Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, told Radio Slobodna Evropa (RSE), referring to members of ultra-right groups from Serbia who fought with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Part of the same unit since 2014
Stefan Dimitrijević from the Belgrade settlement of Batajnica was 33 years old when he lost his life as a fighter of the so-called Lugansk People's Republic (LNR), in the territory that official Kyiv considers occupied by separatists who are militarily and financially supported by the Kremlin.
The war in Ukraine
On May 21, 2015, before the High Court in Belgrade, Dimitrijević was sentenced to one year and six months of suspended imprisonment. As stated in the answer that RSE received from the High Court, he accepted the plea agreement, in which he was found guilty of participating in a war or armed conflict in a foreign country.
On that occasion, it was established that Dimitrijević was a member of the "International Brigade" (Unité Continentale), which was part of the "Prizrak" (in Russian - phantom) brigade.
On the same day in 2015, Dimitrijević was sentenced along with seven other people, but their names were protected in the verdicts that the High Court provided to RSE. All those convicted were members of "Unité continentale", it is stated in the verdicts.
Nevertheless, Dimitrijević, like some other foreign fighters from Serbia, later returned to Ukraine and put on the uniform again.
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the "Prizrak" brigade continued to operate in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine.
A few days before the information about the death of Stefan Dimitrijević arrived, the Italian media reported that Edi Ongaro (41), an Italian citizen, who joined "Prizrak" in 2015, had died on March 31.
He allegedly died in the town of Avdijivka, north of the city of Donetsk.
The "Prizrak" brigade was blacklisted by the European Union and the United States as an "illegal armed separatist group".
French-Serbian connection
The group "Unité continentale", to which Stefan Dimitrijević belonged, was labeled by the General Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine in 2018 as a geopolitical extreme right-wing movement founded in 2014. Three years ago, the Prosecutor's Office in Kyiv initiated proceedings against six Serbian citizens, including Dimitrijević, because they were part of this group.
Two French citizens – Viktor Lenta and Nikola Perović – are mentioned as the founders of "Unité continentale". According to the media, both were French military veterans.
According to French media, Lenta was allegedly dismissed from the army due to his ties to extreme right-wing groups.
RSE found a photo of a group of armed men in masked uniforms posing with the flag of Serbia on the social network Vkontakte, the Russian counterpart to Facebook. Among them are Nikola Perović and Stefan Dimitrijević.
The photo was published in October 2014, but RSE was unable to determine when it was taken.
Also, in the same period, a photo was published on the Vkontakte platform in which, among others, Perović, Viktor Lenta and Radomir Počuča, another foreign mercenary from Serbia who fought with pro-Russian separatists in 2014, are posing. Počuča also entered into an agreement with the High Court in Belgrade in 2016 and was sentenced to a year and a half in prison, suspended for five years.
In 2015, Viktor Lenta, the then commander of the "Unite continentale" unit, told the Russian newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" that there were "a lot of Serbs" in the unit, but that they "went home" in the meantime.
"They have a difficult political situation there: Vučić's government (Aleksandar Vučić, President of Serbia), on the one hand, is putting pressure on their families, on the other hand, they promised them amnesty, to everyone who returns. So they all packed up and left." said Lenta.
It is not known whether Lenta and Nikola Perović returned to Ukraine after Russia launched its invasion on February 24.
The last post on the Facebook social network "Unité continentale" was made on February 27, a few days after the start of Russia's general invasion of Ukraine. In the days after the Kremlin's decision, the page published several articles in which the West and the United States of America were labeled as the culprits of such a move by Russia.
Fighter from Serbia in "Wagner"
On July 8, the Telegram channel of the Russian paramilitary unit "Vagner", which was put on the list of sanctions by the European Union, published photos of an armed man in a masked uniform with the signature "Volunteer from Serbia".
In the photos, the man poses with three fingers raised, which is the Serbian national symbol. His face is covered with a mask, and there are no military emblems on his uniform, so it is not possible to determine which unit he belongs to.
One of the photos was taken in a military dormitory under a tent, which is indicated by the rows of metal beds on which military uniforms and wardrobe are stacked. RSE was unable to determine when and at which location the photos were taken.
The same photos appeared three days earlier on several Twitter profiles from Serbia. On one of them, which is signed as "Marko", along with the photos it is written: "Greetings to Serbia from the Serbs from the Wagner Group".
HRW claims that Russian paramilitary forces have been killing civilians in Central Africa
According to the world media, members of the Russian private paramilitary group "Vagner" are linked to massacres and murders of civilians in Mali and other African countries. In December 2021, the European Union put this formation on the list of sanctions.
Member of the Main Board of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), Dragan Šormaz, said in May of this year that members of "Vagner" participated in anti-regime demonstrations in Belgrade in 2020. In an interview with the newspaper "Danas", he did not present evidence for this claim, except that he said that "it is a fact, because we arrested them".
On the other hand, Dragan Đukanović, a member of the SNS Presidency and the Parliamentary Committee for the Control of Security Services, called these allegations "notorious nonsense".
In March 2017, the High Court in Belgrade convicted one person for fighting in the "Vagner" unit. As stated in the verdict, in which the name and surname of the convicted person are hidden, he was sentenced to one year of probation for a period of three years.
How do young people become extremists?
In early 2022, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights published a study entitled "The Rise of the Right - The Case of Serbia", in which it focused especially on Serbian citizens who fought on foreign battlefields.
In seven series of interviews, the researchers interviewed more than 60 people from different social groups, institutions and residences - from Novi Pazar in the south of Serbia, to the Penitentiary in Pančevo, twenty kilometers north of Belgrade. Veterans from the wars of the nineties were also interviewed.
Jarmila Bujak Stanko, who was a consultant to the Helsinki Committee on this research, says that several factors are involved in the radicalization of young people - from the socio-economic situation in which they live, to the lack of support in the environment, to the need to belong to an ideology.
"And then they came across some ideologically right-wing extreme group or individual who encouraged them, accepted them, encouraged them, offered them the opportunity to earn easily and quickly, offered them to belong to a group, and they found themselves there. They even found the meaning of their engagement", says Bujak Stanko.
According to her, young people are recruited into fan-hooligan groups as teenagers, which involve them in various criminal activities and thus provide them with certain financial resources. Some of them later decided to go to the front in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
It is, says Jarmila Bujak Stanko, about young men in the second half of their twenties.
"They didn't tell us who the organizers of these group departures to foreign battlefields are, but the impression is that they are connected to these ideological right-wing groups and that they are international connections that recruit people from here to go to Ukraine," explains Bujak Stanko.
Sobering at the front
According to what the researchers were told by those who had the experience of fighting in eastern Ukraine - and there were fewer than ten of them among those interviewed - going to the battlefield was disappointing.
"They expected some compensation and that it would go further in the ideological direction of the importance of struggle, victory, justice and so on, and that facing reality was sobering and that they returned," says Bujak Stanko and underlines:
"Of those we talked to, no one was satisfied with going to Ukraine and they all decided that they would not go again."
The interviewee of RSE, however, adds that these young people, despite the disappointment, sought engagement in other organizations and "nationalist groups at the international level".
"They found some ideological inspiration and fulfillment there," says Bujak Stanko.
Symbols of the right
Before going to the front, Stefan Dimitrijević was part of ultra-rightist circles in Belgrade. Therefore, the symbols that adorn the mural with his image are not surprising - the flag of the former imperial Russia and the coat of arms from the time of the Quisling government of Milan Nedić.
The flag of Imperial Russia, with its black, yellow and white stripes, is popular among Russian monarchists and ultra-nationalists, who do not hide their pretensions that Russia recover its former territories from that period, such as Ukraine.
Nedić's double-headed eagle, from the time when Serbia was ruled by a puppet government installed by Nazi Germany, is also a frequent symbol on the extreme right-wing scene of Serbia, where Stefan Dimitrijević was one of the actors.
Radio Slobodna Evropa (RSE) found a photo on Dimitrijević's account on the Russian social network Vkontakte from 2016 in which he is posing in a large group of people with a flag bearing the symbol of the spinning wheel, also known as the Slovenian swastika.
On the same social network, you can also find a photo of Dimitrijević posing on the Ibar bridge in North Mitrovica, 70 kilometers west of Belgrade, with a group of men carrying the flag of the ultra-right organization "Nacionalisti Novi Sad", while some of them salute with the Nazi salute.
Also, in one of the photos from 2016, Dimitrijević is posing in the T-shirt of the fan group FK Rad "United force", which is mainly made up of members of the neo-Nazi skinhead movement.
Silence of competent institutions
RSE sent a request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) of Serbia and the Security and Information Agency (BIA) whether they have information on how many citizens of Serbia are currently participating in the war in Ukraine, but by the time the text was concluded, the answer had not arrived.
There were no answers from the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
For now, the public only has estimates from the Embassy of Ukraine in Belgrade from December 2018. According to these estimates, more than 300 citizens of Serbia went to fight on the pro-Russian side.
Discussion in the EU about bans for right-wingers from the Western Balkans
The Czech Presidency of the European Union (EU) has prepared a document in which a discussion is proposed on the effectiveness of the bans to which right-wing extremists should be exposed in the countries of the Western Balkans.
In the document entitled "Right-wing extremism in the Western Balkans", which Radio Free Europe (RSE) had access to, it is stated that local extremism in the Western Balkans takes various forms, whether it is radical football fans or radical followers of various pan-Slavic, nationalist or radical movements.
It is established that the war in Ukraine has a noticeable impact on the Western Balkans, while local extreme right-wing groups perceive it in a very strong way.
It is also added that "some local followers of the extreme right have left to fight in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, most likely on the Russian side."
The document also states that many extreme right-wing movements in the Western Balkans have a "strong aversion to NATO and the European Union", while at the same time they have "strong sympathy for the Russian Federation".
On July 14, the Working Group for the fight against terrorism, the EU body that leads and manages the general agenda of the EU Council on the fight against terrorism, should discuss the document. The outcome of the meeting is not expected to be known to the public, given that each discussion of the working group is conducted confidentially, without taking notes or transcripts.
What do those who have already fought in Ukraine say?
RSE also asked Dejan Berić, a Serbian citizen who eight years ago joined the pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region as a sniper, to ask if there is any information about the number of fighters from Serbia in Ukraine.
Berić refused to speak for RSE. It is not known where he is at the moment.
He actively comments on the events in Ukraine on social networks and claims to be participating in the fighting in the east of that country. In a post on his Telegram channel dated July 8, Berić writes that he and his unit returned from Lisičansk to Donetsk.
"The liberation of the Donetsk People's Republic will begin in a few days," wrote Berić. RSE was unable to establish the authenticity of these recordings and confirm Berić's whereabouts.
In a video posted on June 30 on his YouTube channel, he claims that a day earlier he "returned from his position" in Popasna, a city in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine.
"Under Lisičanski, we destroyed a group of Georgian mercenaries," he states in that video.
RSE was unable to confirm either of these two claims by Berić.
Stevan Milošević, another Serbian citizen convicted for participating in the war in Ukraine, announced on his Facebook account that he was in Moscow after the start of the Russian invasion.
"I'm fine, people, I'm in Moscow..." Milošević wrote on March 9. Three days later, he also published a phone number with a Russian area code where friends can contact him.
RSE wrote to Milošević and asked him where he is currently and whether he is participating in the fighting, as well as whether he has information on how many Serbian citizens are currently participating in the war in
Ukraine on the side of Russia. He saw the message, but did not respond to it.
In 2014, Milošević was also part of "Unite continentale". After being sentenced to five years of probation in 2015, Milošević violated his probation and returned to Donbas.
Through Facebook, RSE also contacted Bratislava Živković, the commander of the so-called "Chetnik movement", who in 2014 participated with his group of people in the fighting in Lugansk.
Živković was last active on Facebook on June 13. He posted a short video on March 26 from the street at an unknown location.
"Ours are coming," he said as military trucks marked with the white letter Z, a symbol of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, pass behind him. "We expect shelling, but there is no fear," he added on that occasion.
Živković did not respond to RSE's message.
Right-wing extremism is not a problem for the authorities
The national strategy for the fight against terrorism in Serbia expired in 2021, and a new one has not yet been adopted. However, even in the previous right-wing extremism was not recognized as one of the key problems, nor were the measures to combat this social problem included in that document, says Jarmila Bujak Stanko.
"Other groups were recognized, but right-wing extremism was not," she says.
Court epilogues to those convicted of war in Syria on the one hand and Ukraine on the other speak vividly about this. In March 2019, the Court of Appeals sentenced seven citizens of Serbia of the Muslim religion to terrorist association, cooperation with the so-called Islamic State, as well as recruitment of Serbian citizens to the battlefields. They were sentenced to sentences ranging from seven and a half to 11 years in prison.
On the other hand, the High Court in Belgrade handed down 31 verdicts for participation in the Ukrainian battlefield, of which a suspended sentence was imposed in 29 cases, according to the report of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights.
"In addition, two people were sentenced to six months in prison, which they served in the premises where the convicts live," the report states.
This, says Jarmila Bujak Stanko, is an important factor that enables right-wing extremism to grow stronger in Serbia.
"This shows that it is accepted here and that it is not recognized as a harmful phenomenon," says Bujak Stanko.
According to her, the institutions have the capacity to carry out the de-radicalization of young people, but there is a lack of political will for this.
"One of the more important causes is that a lot of right-wing extremism in our country is based on the events of the nineties, without us as a society having gone through the phase of dealing with the past. Without that, it is difficult for any government to distance itself from what is happening now," concludes Bujak Stanko.
The amendments to the Criminal Code of Serbia from 2014 for the participation of citizens of Serbia on foreign battlefields threatened a prison sentence of six months to five years. However, the penalty is higher if an individual participates in an armed conflict abroad as part of a group. In this case, a prison sentence of one to eight years is threatened.
Organizing participation in a war or armed conflict in a foreign country is punishable by imprisonment for two to ten years.